BYOND's subscription system for games is incredibly antiquated and in dire need of modernization. Since BYOND takes a cut from game subscriptions, wouldn't it be in BYOND's best interest to make the system more refined so both developers and BYOND could make more money?
What BYOND needs is support for cash shops. A cash shop is something which allows players to buy digital goods and services from game developers. A fully-featured cash shop should do more than just let developers check the hub for a single, catch-all game subscription. Developers should be able to create "shop items" and price them as they desire.
One possible shop item could be a simple "Silver Subscription" which adds 30 days of game time to that account, or a "Gold Subscription" which adds 90 days. Another potential shop item would be "Bag of Gold" which increases a hub variable, shop_bagofgold, by 1. The next time that player logs into the game they are given a bag of gold while shop_bagofgold is decreased by 1. One last potential shop item would be a "Ring of Beginning" which sets the hub variable, shop_ringbegin to 1. Every time the player creates a new character they are given an awesome ring if that hub variable happens to check out.
Those are the sorts of things I believe a cash shop should support. Other helpful features would be supporting coupon codes which developers could enable for certain shop items which alters their price to another set amount dictated by the developer. Another great feature would be single-use codes developers could have the hub spit out for them which can be redeemed by players purchasing whatever shop items they're meant for.
While not directly related to cash shops, being able to automatically split revenue generated by cash shop purchases between different developers would be a huge bonus. If a programmer and an artist collaborate on a game they should be able to just set the hub to split all income 50/50 between them so they don't have to worry about managing money and can just focus on making cool games.
I think if those features were added game developers could get a lot more money out of their games. It certainly beats setting up their own custom commerce systems which completely bypasses BYOND.
ID:1279707
 May 30 2013, 7:02 pm
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May 30 2013, 7:49 pm
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Tom
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I think one very simple thing we could do is a subscription that is quantity-based rather than time-based. So when you CheckPassport(), instead of seeing "10 days left", you'd see "10 purchases", and you could then use that to translate into any currency you wanted (including in-game commerce).
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The cash shop is a good idea, this could also be represented on the games hub with images as a "shop"
Although this is entirely possible to do yourself with PayPal PHP and a MySQL database, it would then be up to the developer to donate to BYOND, which may not be ideal with the issues at hand. | |
Tom wrote:
I think one very simple thing we could do is a subscription that is quantity-based rather than time-based. So when you CheckPassport(), instead of seeing "10 days left", you'd see "10 purchases", and you could then use that to translate into any currency you wanted (including in-game commerce). If so could we instead of it being based on "days" allow the user to buy a set-amount of "days". Days being something chosen by the user. | |
It would be most helpful if there was a sister stat "redeemed" which would allow developers to track purchases in multi-server setups without needing to run their own master server to track everything. Give each shop item an ID, purchase count, and redeemed count, then you would have pretty much have most scenarios covered.
The key thing to remember here is you have to make BYOND's purchase system much easier to set up and use use than the short amount of time it takes to set up a Paypal shop. Rather than making BYOND a charity case where developers let BYOND have a cut of their profit because they feel like it, make BYOND's cash shop good enough so there shouldn't be a need to set up a third party cash shop. | |
I think items shops should be coded in-game and and let people buy a currency on the game's hub, like subscriptions. I'm sure at least some players would spend more money that way.
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Xakorik wrote:
I think items shops should be coded in-game and and let people buy a currency on the game's hub, like subscriptions. I'm sure at least some players would spend more money that way. Right, that's how I felt, and it would be pretty easy for us to make a subscription that could be purchased for "credits" instead of "time". | |
So, you're on board with bringing back a form BYONDimes? I'm not sure I follow. It would certainly be nice for in-game purchases but everyone seems to hate Microsoft Points.
If they're hub-specific "credits" then it would be incredibly annoying to have dormant credits spread all over the place from games I haven't been able to use them all on. | |
Well, my idea was more or less hub-specific credits. The problem with a generic currency is that there is no accountability. For instance, if someone buys $X of currency and spends it on four games, and then we are issued a chargeback, we have no way of recouping that $X since it may have already been cashed out or moved around. But if we associate it with a hub, then it's easy to track. Better, we have a new system where the purchase is actually made on the hub owner's account (sending us a cut), so they have complete control.
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I think hub-specific credits would be a very, very bad idea. Say I buy 50 credits in NEStalgia and use them for a 30 credit vanity item which leaves me with 20 credits left over. All of NEStalgia's items are 30 credit minimum so now I have 20 credits left in my account which I can't use. Eternia on the other hand has a neat 20 credit item for sale, but I can't buy it with the money I already spent because those credits are only for NEStalgia.
You get the worst of both worlds with that system. With direct cash shop payments you have to break out your credit card every time you want to buy something, but that can be saved on record and you don't waste any money with leftover points. If you want to use credits then they must absolutely work across all of BYOND. What you could do is make them unable to be traded or redeemed, players buy them and can't cash out like they could with dimes. When they're spent they go into the revenue stream for that game which can then be redeemed by the developer. | |
While I agree with you that a versatile system is superior, it presents logistical problems as I mentioned. We'd have to be able to track each approved-game sale so that if there is a refund, that could be recouped (giving the author a negative balance if they had cashed out). I suspect that if the currency were to be used only for a few exclusive, trusted games, it'd probably work for the most part. So the issue is whether that is worth it for us (obviously it wasn't in the case of the free-flowing BYONDimes).
However, there is another issue here, and that is BYOND acting as a bank without actually being one. This is a somewhat gray area for tax purposes, because if it takes off, we suddenly have this big inbound income and then have to handle the write-offs (1099s and such) for outbound expenses. We've been trying to move away from that by having a direct payment system where the money goes to the author and then to us, but that doesn't work with a general currency. One thing of note is that even if we did this per-hub, one could share currency by checking the passports of other hubs (this would probably only work for a group of games owned by single author since they'd want to be able to to manage the balance across all of the games; I suppose we'd want an interface for that so that they wouldn't have to track it themselves). What I'm getting at is that I'd be far more comfortable if the transaction could occur through the author so that we didn't have to deal with the money/tax implications. That wouldn't be such a hard thing to setup since it is similar to our existing passports. It isn't as functional as the general system but it doesn't hurt anything either. | |
I guess credits are out then, that system just has too many downsides. Having them available to only a select few games is sort of antithetical to the idea of having a BYOND-wide currency which is supposed to work for any game on BYOND. You also have to consider not every game would have its business model structured around credits, so you would only have a select few games from a select few developers even using the system you just wasted all that time and effort creating.
Another scenario I just envisioned was Jimmy talking his parents into buying 500 points for Game A, being confused when he can't spend some on Game B, then once the parents hear about it they perform a chargeback under the assumption they were scammed. In my opinion it's just too confusing and limited to work. With direct cash shop payments you wouldn't have to manage any convoluted point systems and would only have to track purchases. In the event of a chargeback you're dealing with specific shop items in specific games which would be the easiest to track. With the features detailed in previous posts, a cash shop could just make a "500 credit" item and take advantage of every positive trait of per-game credits while avoiding many of the negatives. The "500 credit" item would be purchased from the hub cash shop, it would give the player 500 pretend tokens in-game, then the player could use those tokens for in-game purchases. Since the point of sale is in the cash shop, the in-game purchases don't even have to interact with the hub as they don't deal with real money. | |
I agree with Tom, I was also thinking the hub-specific credits could be shared by the function that it will use.
I also think that if this was added the name of the credits could be named by the author. The question would be the exchange rate for the credits. | |
Hate to bump old posts but I was searching through them and wondered if there was any more news on this? Freemium games have the potential to bring in a lot more money to the game developers and BYOND.
I believe that it would be better to have a Byond-wide currency that can be used for any games that have the option available, then it would be up to the authors to decide how much to charge for the in-game benefits. However as Tom stated, that would cause more hassle for him. That leaves the option of a HUB/Author specific currency that could be spent on particular games created by said author (all Iccussion games for example). While this may seem to be the weaker of the two options, I still think it would be a good thing to have. Some games make a lot of money doing this, I don't see why we shouldn't follow along and make some extra ourselves. As you all know BYOND is in a bit of a financial pickle at the moment, and I'm sure the developers wouldn't mind the option to make some extra pocket money. If it is not going to be a difficult task to set up, what's the harm? | |
A while ago someone suggested bit coins, and they seem to have come a long way since then. Options like bit pay (https://bitpay.com/) now exist to bring it further into the current economy in my opinion which I think rather than BYOND housing the currency, it would be a reasonable thought to have the game developers implement it themselves.
That being said - if BYOND wants a mandatory cut, they would need take their cut and then provide the remaining to the developer. Without the risk of charge backs and decreased percent of cost, the only issue is the variable rate of bitcoins which I believe would only become stable after they are more widely used. | |
So would you (Tom) consider implementing the hub specific currency model, or something similar?
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I too am really keen to see this implemented. I really like the idea of micro-transactions, rather than a single, large, up-front cost. It'd be a great way for current successful games to further help support BYOND.
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I really feel Byond shouldn't be trying to make money as a gaming hub where people spend money consuming game time/items/subscriptions to play games.
Byond has something great, its a way for anyone to start coding and developing their own game. They need to be offering Dream Maker PLUS subscriptions, and selling tilesets ontop of the small amount of money they make from people buying game subs.(assumption that more money would be made off of developers than gamers) | |